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Russian Soups

A hearty soup made with roasted fowls, veal, beef stock, root vegetables, and various fish, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Russian Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine roasted fowls, under nut of veal, and beef stock in a stock pot.

  2. Boil and skim the surface.

  3. Add carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, and celery.

  4. Boil for five hours.

  5. Remove the fat and strain the broth through a cloth.

Prepare the fish

  1. Trim fish fillets into small escalopes and sprinkle with salt.

  2. After an hour, wash and drain the escalopes.

  3. Place the fish in a sauté pan.

  4. Prepare a quenelle of whiting with a purée of mushrooms.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Roasted fowls
Give the broth its body and rich, savoury flavour as they simmer.
Veal
Adds meaty depth and gelatin-rich body to the stock as it cooks.
Beef stock
Supplies a savoury base that the other meats and vegetables build on.
Leeks
Contribute mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Fillets of plaice or brill
Provide delicate white fish flesh that cooks quickly into tender pieces.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface after boiling. Removing the foam and scum as the stock first boils keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Skimming fat later also prevents a greasy, cloudy soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, carrot, turnip, leek, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, carrot, turnip, leek, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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